NASA clears launch of STS-134 for 5/16/2011

William Atkins
Sunday, 15 May 2011 23:50

Science - Space

NASA gave the space shuttle Endeavour and its STS-134 crew the 'go for launch' on the morning of Monday, May 16, 2011. The 25th mission of Endeavour will be its last, and the next-to-last mission for the American space shuttle fleet.

The NASA Mission Management Team (MMT) for the STS-134 mission gave a go for a 8:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) launch for the next-to-last space shuttle mission.

The countdown is proceeding nominally, the launch team is ready, the STS-134 astronauts are also ready, and the weather that morning is expected to be 70% acceptable for launch.

Mike Moses, the chairperson of the MMT, stated, "We had a really good meeting today, unanimous consent from the Mission Management Team to press on with the launch countdown. Everything's in really great shape, really no issues at all."

Moses added, "We took our time to walk through the issue that caused the launch scrub last time, the APU-1 [auxiliary power unit 1] heater problem, to make sure we truly understood our resolution and our fix, that everybody had a chance to see that.... And everybody was fine with that." [NASA: "Shuttle Endeavour cleared for launch"]

The team for the External Tank (ET) of the shuttle will begin fueling at 11:36 p.m. EDT on Sunday night.

The ET contains liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. It provides fuel and oxidizer to the three space shuttle main engines (SSME) on the orbiter.

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